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| Quote: In 1964, a 53-year-old professor of English literature called Marshall McLuhan published a book called Understanding Media. It was brilliant but obtuse in its wide-ranging intellectual flourishes. It described new media - like television and radio and magazines and paperback books - as "extensions of man". It also contained a phrase, which has gone on to have exponential meaning ever since: "the medium is the message". This slogan became one of the forces fuelling The Medium is the Massage. (Yes. Massage.) McLuhan’s encyclopedic ideas were presented as quick-fire bursts of bold words and fragmented images. Readers were being told: this is what accelerated advances in technology and communication are doing to you. | |
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/article ... igital-age
The number of people I have heard calling this book “The Medium is the Message” and then telling me that I’m wrong when I correct them is incredible. I was even told by a university lecturer once to look for it using that name. That kind of mistake lodges and becomes a kind of folk truth, a bit like calling the monster in Frankenstein “Frankenstein”.
Mind you, this little gem at the end of the article further muddies the water:
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| Quote: A clever play on words by Marshall McLuhan? His son Dr Eric McLuhan, on the website of the McLuhan estate, suggests that the title was a “typo”. He says it should have read “ the Message” but it came back from the typesetters with the error. When McLuhan saw “the Massage” he wanted it left as it was. | |
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Anyho, The Medium is the Massage is an interesting read/look. It’s almost like a day’s sifting through the internet - images and text, not always related, butted up together. Some pages even devoid of much content at all.